black friday sale!

 i hope you all had a good turkey day!

 it is now black friday so i have a few things to post here,

some pristine, some 'lightly used' and with negotiable price tags ...

this one just in the door on monday this week ...

this is a claro walnut slab desk i made for a show a few years back ...

it didn't sell and went to the local arts center where they used it as a reception desk,

with a price tag .. no luck there, and next it went to a local art gallery, also with a price tag,

but no luck there either .. the 40 or 50% commission for the galleries 

i think just made it too tough a sale.  so, i am currently offering it at a

'negotiable, commission free price'

 which due to its light use and my current reluctance to 

totally refinish the slab top i feel is quite reasonable ..

please call me at 802-379-1478 to discuss this piece.

here are a few more shots ..

it has a nice 24" pencil drawer and a secret compartment ...

a generous +/- 42" x 66" with a steel base by Sam.

available for viewing by appointment at the shop most any time now.

 click the photos to enlarge them

other items like the one below, ready to go at this link

+/- 42 x 42 x 16 high

a rclaimed chestnut table with self storing leaves

this is another edition of our tables with self storing leaves 

we have made a few different styles using this concept.

above it is upside down with the runner guides shown 

and with the leaves stored under the top    

  

all in, ready to go ...right side up with the leaves in

it is now in stowe, vt with the walnut desk in the previous post

the cad drawing

in the shop with the leaves opened

there is another way to store the leaves that you can see

in a fine woodworking article by tage frid 

it is a simpler mechanism, but it depends on the top 'floating'

which is best accomplished on smaller tables

we have used both methods, but the one above,

while more complicated is better suited to larger tables ...

a live edge walnut desk

  

we started with this slab from good hope hardwoods that

the designer selected from their website.

here's the cad drawing

we went back and forth on the finish for a bit, but settled on 

a couple of coats of waterlox, which gave a nice matte finish.

the finished desk below

all in, all done .. i think it was installed by the designer yesterday

some live edge coffee tables from last august

 sam came back from a jobsite yesterday with some pictures 

of  two coffee tables we made last year, but never photographed 

on site because the house wasn't finished when we delivered them,

two big ones!

this one is claro walnut, about 4 and a half feet wide and 6' long ...

in the background there is a set of stairs that sam made the

steel parts for .. there is a two story piece of glass behind them ...

this one is about the same size with a tricky 'waterfall' end that 

kristian executed flawlessly  .. as i remember, 

the miter cut was over 60" wide ... some other photos of

the tables as we worked on them below ..

after it was cut and glued, the miter was reinforced 

with a piece of 2.5" angle iron

 

before the finish

the other end was supported by a sam made steel trapezoid base.

the claro walnut slab had some nice figure!

always nice to see things in their final homes

a studio style dining table

  

 we got a request recently from a client that i made a cabinet for

'a million years ago' 

actually, it was sometime in the 90s ... 

natural cherry,milk paint and ebony details ...

the client has moved to a new, smaller space and wanted 

a smaller version of the table in the top photo,

which is actually our personal dining table ...

we made this table for a show in 1987, it didn't sell, and 

we moved it into our dining room, replacing a pine table that

i had actually built in the 70s, 

one of my first pieces of furniture back

when i was still a carpenter ...

+/- 36 x 62, black milk paint details, no top inlay

leaving for new jersey shortly

the crow bar has landed

the crow bar has landed,

 and it is living down town now!

views of lots of building and some water ...

night view

view of the river

 day view

and the crow that started it all ...

great clients!

great fun!

good job Kristian!

forms for some curved stone steps

 

well, here we are, trying to figure out if we know what we are doing ...

we have the information below ... 

click the pictures to enlarge them ...

 all we had to do is make some sense of it so that the rise 

starts at the desired final grade, the three rises are equal, and

the last step into the house is the same rise as some steps

that are already finalized about 30 feet to the left of these ...

the existing entryway slab slopes 2" from the door out 

which was another complicating computation ...

you may recognize the ceiling from this blog post 

back in february of 2022

and i thought the ceiling was tricky!

 it was, but so were the forms for the curved steps !
 

we started with a cad drawing more or less based on 

measurements from the blueprints and those taken on site .. 

at some point the offset for the stone facing on the risers was 

 changed from 4.5" to 1.5" ('thin stone' facings) and  

new drawings were made.

 

from the new drawings we decided that it would be a good idea

to make some full size masonite patterns showing the 1.75" overhanging

nose of the bluestone treads and the 1.5" offset for the stone facing.

you can see them in the top photo  ..  that gave us the 

inside radiuses for the wacky wood on the curved forms

and the tops and bottoms of the actual form pieces in green above ...  

algebra 201!

 

once the first form was in place and we confirmed the rise and run

with the set up/full size mockup in the first photowe were able 

to make the forms for the second and third pours below 

 

viola!  

base for the riser and bluestone of the first step poured yesterday!

shop tour ... 2010

 well, blast from the past ...

i used to have a link to this video on the home page of my blog

but for the last few years it has linked to a 'page not found' ...

miraculously, it has somehow been restored though i have no idea how.

there it is, under the blog archive that, surprisingly- starts in 2007

up to almost a thousand posts now and over 2,000,000 page views ...

check it out!

use the link above as it will allow you to go to full screen

2010, it was a while ago ...

the crowbar !

long story coming here … 

I made the drawing below in 2010.

Somewhere I have a picture of the two crows I photographed 

in the snow in Burlington, VT. I had recently stumbled over the drawing a few days

before I got an email from a long time client who was looking for 

a ‘bar cabinet’ ... on a whim I sent him the 'crowbar' sketch …

The next day he sent me a picture of a crow on his balcony,

and he decided that ‘the word was out’!

We were on … click the pictures to enlarge them ...

next came the cad drawings 

after a few back and forths on the overall layout, 

we started to make up some sample panels

this was the first ‘real panel’ attempt … 

along with the clients, we were working with

 an interior designer, Ashli Mizell, who suggested smaller crows

 in the distance, and ‘softer mountains’.  she helpfully included 

some mountain images that we incorporated into the final design.

as we moved along, we made a full size mock-up 

and added our colored pencil crow cad drawings …

and then we started work on the crows …

there are between 40 and 50 individual pieces of ebony in each crow.

for the ebony, we were able to use 3” long fretboard cutoffs from Will’s

 stash which created feathers of slightly different colors that are 

easier to see in person than in the photos of the finished piece. 

the crow on the right is our version of clients' balcony crow.

kristian placed the ebony on a piece of mdf in a grid with

double sticky tape and cut the part for the crows from them

on the cnc ... it took about a dozen of will's variegated blocks 

and some other larger pieces of ebony to get all the pieces ...

  

we chose mahogany for the mountains, greenish poplar for 

the ‘fields’,and flaky quartersawn sycamore for the sky.

the three main woods are all slightly different thicknesses, which

create a bit of depth and gave us a place to add some black over

green painted borders.  that led to a discussion of what to use for the top

of the bar, and we chose some Vermont quarried verde antique with both

black and green colors inherent in the stone.  pretty stunning stuff!

all together now!

a couple more here ..

there are a few mirrors

a paneled back for the view from the balcony

an unfinished panel close up

there were a few files

i have a long time thing for crows, and often use them to

decorate my pottery ...

i'd also like to thank karen bonderchuk for her lovely book, 'a crow a day',

which i consulted as we got underway, and as we went along ...

crow anatomy consultant, though she didn't know it til now !

thanks karen!